Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Books

A gallery of books by faculty in the Department of Communication and Theater Arts, College of Arts & Letters, Old Dominion University.

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Listening to the SONG of Life: Listening to Self, Others, Nature, and Goddess-God-the Divine
2024
E. James Baesler

Listening to the SONG of Life means listening to all of life. The word "SONG" represents four listening contexts: Self (S), Others (O), Nature (N), Goddess-God-the Divine (G). Listening to the SONG of life offers a broader, inclusive, and magnanimous view listening. The book draws on scholarship from multiple disciplines in the humanities and social sciences and includes experiential learning activities such as: meditation for cultivating attention and insight, using a listening stick for building connection and intimacy with others, grounding to root and connect with the earth, and holy listening, passage mediation, and praying in color for listening to the Divine. [From Bowker Bookwire]
Family Communication and Cultural Transformation: (Re)Awakening Legacies of Equality, Social Justice, Freedom, and Hope
2023
Rhunette C. Diggs (Editor) and Thomas J. Socha (Editor)

Building on their past work in race and family communication, Rhunette C. Diggs and Thomas J. Socha gather in this volume contemporary theory and research concerning ways that families use communication to transform inherited cultural legacies for the better (Communication 3.0).

The book expands the field of communication’s understanding of the life-long impact that family communication has on the managing diverse and clashing cultural relationships, identities, meanings, and communication practices. It spotlights the economically disenfranchised alongside the economically secure, the systematically oppressed next to beneficiaries of Whiteness, and those actually or metaphorically killed and or threatened by violence and hateful systems outside of home. Together, the contributions address omissions of diverse family contexts in family communication research and reconsider qualitative and quantitative approaches that bring respect and equality to the participant-researcher relationship.

This book is suitable as a supplementary text for courses in family communication, family studies, race and ethnicity in communication, and intergroup communication.
Shaping Dance Canons: Criticism, Aesthetics, and Equity
2023
Kate Mattingly

Dance criticism has long been integral to dance as an art form, serving as documentation and validation of dance performances, yet few studies have taken a close look at the impact of key critics and approaches to criticism over time. The first book to examine dance criticism in the United States across 100 years, from the late 1920s to the early twenty-first century, Shaping Dance Canons argues that critics in the popular press have influenced how dance has been defined and valued, as well as which artists and dance forms have been taken most seriously.

Kate Mattingly likens the effect of dance writing to that of a flashlight, illuminating certain aesthetics at the expense of others. Mattingly shows how criticism can preserve and reproduce criteria for what qualifies as high art through generations of writers and in dance history courses, textbooks, and curricular design. She examines the gatekeeping role of prominent critics such as John Martin and Yvonne Rainer while highlighting the often-overlooked perspectives of writers from minoritized backgrounds and dance traditions. The book also includes an analysis of digital platforms and current dance projects—On the Boards TV, thINKingDANCE, Black Dance Stories, and Amara Tabor-Smith’s House/Full of BlackWomen—that challenge systemic exclusions. In doing so, the book calls for ongoing dialogue and action to make dance criticism more equitable and inclusive. [From Amazon.com]
Television’s Spatial Capital: Location, Relocation, Dislocation
2021
Myles McNutt

This book launches a comprehensive detailing of the dramatic expansion of the geography of television production into new cities, states, provinces, and countries, and how those responsible for shaping the "landscape" of television have been forced to adapt, taking established strategies for engaging with space and place through mediated representation and renegotiating them to account for the new map of television production. [Amazon.com]
Neo-Noir as Post-Classical Hollywood Cinema
2020
Robert Arnett

Neo-Noir as Post-Classical Hollywood Cinema suggests the terms “noir” and “neo-noir” have been rendered almost meaningless by overuse. The book seeks to re-establish a purpose for neo-noir films and re-consider the organization of 60 years of neo-noir films. Using the notion of post-classical, the book establishes how neo-noir breaks into many movements, some based on time and others based on thematic similarities. The combined movements then form a mosaic of neo-noir. The time-based movements examine Transitional Noir (1960s-early 1970s), Hollywood Renaissance Noir in the 1970s, Eighties Noir, Nineties Noir, and Digital Noir of the 2000s. The thematic movements explore Nostalgia Noir, Hybrid Noir, and Remake and Homage Noir. Academics as well as film buffs will find this book appealing as it deconstructs popular films and places them within new contexts. [Amazon.com]
Doing Academic Research: A Practical Guide to Research Methods and Analysis
2019
Ted Gournelos, Joshua R. Hammonds, and Maridath A. Wilson

Doing Academic Research is a concise, accessible, and tightly organized overview of the research process in the humanities, social sciences, and business. Conducting effective scholarly research can seem like a frustrating, confusing, and unpleasant experience. Early researchers often have inconsistent knowledge and experience, and can become overwhelmed – reducing their ability to produce high quality work. Rather than a book about research, this is a practical guide to doing research. It guides budding researchers along the process of developing an effective workflow, where to go for help, and how to actually complete the project. The book addresses diversity in abilities, interest, discipline, and ways of knowing by focusing not just on the process of conducting any one method in detail, but also on the ways in which someone might choose a research method and conduct it successfully. Finally, it emphasizes accessibility and approachability through real-world examples, key insights, tips, and tricks from active researchers. This book is a highly useful addition to both content area courses and research methods courses, as well as a practical guide for graduate students and independent scholars interested in publishing their research. [From Amazon.com]
Game of Thrones: A Guide to Westeros and Beyond: The Complete Series
2019
Myles McNutt

Bound in gorgeous gold and silver foil, this remarkable volume celebrates and explores the complex stories, relationships, and world building in HBO's Emmy-award winning Game of Thrones series, from Season 1 through Season 8. The book follows the story of Essos and southern Westeros, with fire breathing dragons and clashing noble houses, and the story of northern Westeros, where the Night King leads his army of the dead across the icy landscape. Mapping bloodlines and battle lines, the approximately 300 pages are filled with stunning photographs, original art, timelines, and charts newly created for this book. This definitive visual guide commemorates this momentous series and offers a must-have companion for every Game of Thrones fan. [Amazon.com]
Crisis Communication and Crisis Management: An Ethical Approach
2016
Burton St. John III and Yvette E. Pearson

The text introduces students to the fundamentals of crisis communication using an ethical approach, integrating ethical reasoning into all the key steps that communicators must take to successfully manage a crisis. The book combines comprehensive coverage of the key skills, concepts and theories with an extensive collection of case studies.
Communicating Hope and Resilience Across the Lifespan
2015
Gary A. Beck and Thomas J. Socha

From serious illness to natural disasters, humans turn to communication as a major source of strength to help us bounce back and to keep growing and thriving. Communicating Hope and Resilience Across the Lifespan addresses the various ways in which communication plays an important role in fostering hope and resilience. Adopting a lifespan approach and offering a new framework to expand our understanding of the concepts of «hope» and «resilience» from a communication perspective, contributors highlight the variety of «stressors» that people may encounter in their lives. They examine connections between the cognitive dimensions of hope such as self-worth, self-efficacy, and creative problem solving. They look at the variety of messages that can facilitate or inhibit experiencing hope in relationships, groups, and organizations. Other contributors look at how communication that can build strengths, enhance preparation, and model successful adaptation to change has the potential to lessen the negative impact of stress, demonstrating resilience. As an important counterpoint to recent work focusing on what goes wrong in interpersonal relationships, communication that has the potential to uplift and facilitate responses to stressful circumstances is emphasized throughout this volume. By offering a detailed examination of how to communicate hope and resilience, this book presents practical lessons for individuals, marriages, families, relationship experts, as well as a variety of other practitioners. [Amazon.com]
Selling the Silver Bullet: The Lone Ranger and Transmedia Brand Licensing
2015
Avi Santo

Deciphering how iconic characters gain and retain their status as cultural commodities, Selling the Silver Bullet focuses on the work done by peripheral consumer product and licensing divisions in selectively extending the characters' reach and in cultivating investment in these characters among potential stakeholders. Tracing the Lone Ranger's decades-long career as intellectual property allows Avi Santo to analyze the mechanisms that drive contemporary character licensing and entertainment brand management practices, while at the same time situating the licensing field's development within particular sociohistorical and industrial contexts. He also offers a nuanced assessment of the ways that character licensing firms and consumer product divisions have responded to changing cultural and economic conditions over the past eighty years, which will alter perceptions about the creative and managerial authority these ancillary units wield. [Amazon.com]
Popular Music in a Digital Music Economy: Problems and Practices for an Emerging Service Industry
2014
Tim J. Anderson

In the late 1990s, the MP3 became the de facto standard for digital audio files and the networked computer began to claim a significant place in the lives of more and more listeners. The dovetailing of these two circumstances is the basis of a new mode of musical production and distribution where new practices emerge. This book is not a definitive statement about what the new music industry is. Rather, it is devoted to what this new industry is becoming by examining these practices as experiments, dedicated to negotiating what is replacing an "object based" industry oriented around the production and exchange of physical recordings. In this new economy, constant attention is paid to the production and licensing of intellectual property and the rise of the "social musician" who has been encouraged to become more entrepreneurial. Finally, every element of the industry now must consider a new type of audience, the "end user", and their productive and distributive capacities around which services and musicians must orient their practices and investments. [Amazon.com]
Making Media Work: Cultures of Management in the Entertainment Industries
2014
Derek Johnson (Editor), Derek Kompare (Editor), and Avi Santo (Editor)

Making Media Work aims to provide a deeper and more nuanced understanding of
management within the entertainment industries. Drawing from work in critical
sociology and cultural studies, the collection theorizes management as a
pervasive, yet flexible set of principles drawn upon by a wide range of
practitioners—artists, talent scouts, performers, directors, show runners, and
more—in their ongoing efforts to articulate relationships and bridge
potentially discordant forces within the media industries. The contributors
interrogate managerial labor and identity, shine a light on how management
understands its roles within cultural and creative contexts, and reconfigure
the complex relationship between labor and managerial authority as productive
rather than solely prohibitive. Engaging with primary evidence gathered through
interviews, archives, and trade materials, the essays offer tremendous insight
into how management is understood and performed within media industry contexts.The volume as a whole traces the changing roles of management both historically and in the contemporary moment within US and international contexts, and across a range of media forms, from film and television to video games and social media. [Amazon.com]
Pathways to Public Relations: Histories of Practice and Profession
2014
Burton St. John III (Editor), Margot Opdycke Lamme (Editor), and Jacquie L'Etang (Editor)

Over the centuries, scholars have studied how individuals, institutions and groups have used various rhetorical stances to persuade others to pay attention to, believe in, and adopt a course of action. The emergence of public relations as an identifiable and discrete occupation in the early 20th century led scholars to describe this new iteration of persuasion as a unique, more systematized, and technical form of wielding influence, resulting in an overemphasis on practice, frequently couched within an American historical context. This volume responds to such approaches by expanding the framework for understanding public relations history, investigating broad, conceptual questions concerning the ways in which public relations rose as a practice and a field within different cultures and countries at different times in history… [From Amazon.com]
Positive Communication in Health and Wellness
2013
Margaret J. Pitts (Editor) and Thomas J. Socha (Editor)

Inspired by recent work in positive psychology, Positive Communication in Health and Wellness gives scholarly attention to what’s going right in people’s communication lives. The book harnesses a dispersed - but powerful - body of communication scholarship that has at its center a focus on building healthy communication contexts and generating wellness. By organizing and representing contemporary communication scholarship in the area of positive communication in health and wellness, the essays in this book will inspire collective action and further scholarship that highlights the potential for flourishing health, enhanced well-being, and greater human fulfillment through positive communication. This book will be useful in health communication courses as well as those in relational and organizational communication. [From the publisher]
Westerns: The Essential 'Journal of Popular Film and Television' Collection
2012
Gary R. Edgerton (Editor) and Michael T. Marsden (Editor)

For nearly two centuries, Americans have embraced the Western like no other artistic genre. Creators and consumers alike have utilized this story form in literature, painting, film, radio and television to explore questions of national identity and purpose. Westerns: The Essential Collection comprises the Journal of Popular Film and Television’s rich and longstanding legacy of scholarship on Westerns with a new special issue devoted exclusively to the genre. This collection examines and analyzes the evolution and significance of the screen Western from its earliest beginnings to its current global reach and relevance in the 21st century.

Westerns: The Essential Collection addresses the rise, fall and durability of the genre, and examines its preoccupation with multicultural matters in its organizational structure. Containing eighteen essays published between 1972 and 2011, this seminal work is divided into six sections covering Silent Westerns, Classic Westerns, Race and Westerns, Gender and Westerns, Revisionist Westerns and Westerns in Global Context. A wide range of international contributors offer original critical perspectives on the intricate relationship between American culture and Western films and television series... [Amazon.com]
The Positive Side of Interpersonal Communication
2012
Thomas J. Socha (Editor) and Margaret J. Pitts (Editor)

Building on past research that includes prosocial-antisocial communication, positive psychology, as well as complementing the dark side of interpersonal communication, this groundbreaking volume brings together veteran interpersonal communication scholars to examine the bright, positive sides of communication in human relations. Together, they begin to frame a conceptual foundation for studies on the «positive» side of interpersonal communication, or in general terms, relational communication that promotes happiness, health, and wellness. In the process they examine moments of relational beauty, laughter and play, positive emotion, relational support, understanding, and forgiveness, as well as facilitation of positive character traits and positive relational communication values. The Positive Side of Interpersonal Communication is intended to serve as a starting point for future research as well as inspiring new areas of interpersonal communication scholarship. [Amazon.com]
News with a View: Essays on the Eclipse of Objectivity in Modern Journalism
2012
Burton St. John III (Editor) and Kirsten A. Johnson (Editor)

Modern mainstream journalism faces a very real disturbance of its foundational premise that credible news is gathered and articulated from an objective stance. This volume offers new examinations of how the traditional notion of objectivity is changing as professional journalists grapple with a rapidly evolving news terrain--one that has become increasingly crowded by those with no journalistic credentials. Examining historical antecedents, current dilemmas, international aspects, and theoretical considerations, contributors make the case that the journalist's impulse to hold onto objectivity, and to ignore the increasing subjectivities to which citizens are attuned, actually contributes to the news media's disconnect from today's news consumer. Revealing how traditional journalism needs to incorporate "post-objective" stances, these essays stimulate further thought and conversation about news with a view in both theory and practice. [From Amazon.com]
Mad Men: Dream Come True TV
2011
Gary R. Edgerton (Editor)

Don and Betty Draper live in a picture-perfect world. He is a hard-living advertising executive - a 'mad man' - on the fast track. She's a Bryn Mawr graduate and former fashion model, now a suburban princess, mother of three children. If they've everything, why are they so unhappy? Why is their dream come true not enough? This book explores, analyses, celebrates the world of "Mad Men" in all its aspects, and includes an interview with its Executive Producer and an episode guide. Every few years a new television program comes along to capture and express the zeitgeist. "Mad Men" is now that show. Since premiering in July 2007, it's won many awards and is syndicated across the globe. Its imprint is evident throughout contemporary culture, from features to fashions and online debate. Its creator Matthew Weiner, a former exec producer on "The Sopranos", has created again compelling, complex characters, this time in the sophisticated go-go world of Madison Avenue through the 1960s, with the excessive drinking and smoking, as well as the playing out of the prejudices and anxieties of an era long neglected in popular culture. "Mad Men" is a zeitgeist show of the early twenty-first century, this book demonstrates, partly because its characters are an earlier, confused and conflicted version of ourselves, trying to make the best of a future unfolding at breakneck speed. [Amazon.com]
You Are Beautiful: A Journey of Discovery
2011
Joy Lynn Francis

You are beautiful, priceless, and cherished. Discover that you are loved, and you are lovely. Within these pages, learn that God can heal the brokenhearted. Uncover the startling truth that He is your faithful comforter, redeemer, healer, and best friend. Have you ever felt unworthy? Ugly? Unwanted? Ashamed? Then this book is for you. Learn how journeys lead to destiny. Feel what it's like to walk in the promises of God after years in the wilderness. Discover that you are truly valuable and loved… [From Amazon.com]
Press Professionalization and Propaganda: The Rise of Journalistic Double-Mindedness, 1917-1941
2010
Burton St. John III

Increasingly, Americans are turning away from the traditional press--especially newspapers--for the news of the day. In fact, by May 2009 a Pew survey revealed that 63 percent of Americans said they would not miss their paper if it ceased publishing. Other surveys have revealed that since the late 1990s, Americans have significant concerns about the mainstream news media's credibility, with no less than 56 percent voicing reservations about the press's accuracy. At the same time, the mainstream news has continued to show a proclivity for using information proffered by public relations sources; in fact, some studies point to newsrooms that use such propaganda materials for up to 75-80 percent of their stories. As traditional newsrooms continue to either downsize (or, in some cases, disappear) and propaganda materials proliferate, the American public will continue to encounter difficulties obtaining from journalism the accurate and relevant information it needs to make informed decisions within our democracy. Current scholarship about journalism's increasing problems with relevancy often focuses on explorations of the advent of new media technologies and/or journalism's dysfunctional business models. Although those studies are important, they tend toward a presentism that ignores dilemmas that derive from the enduring ways that the press gathers and constructs news. This book argues that the problem of press relevancy can be traced to historical groundings that continue to inform newsroom practices. Specifically, it makes the distinctive claim that modern journalism's own professionalism has made the press prone to using propaganda materials, thus contributing to increasing news media irrelevance. ... [Amazon.com]
Public Journalism 2.0: The Promise and Reality of a Citizen-Engaged Press
2010
Jack Rosenberry and Burton St. John III

Public Journalism 2.0 examines the ways that civic or public journalism is evolving, especially as audience-created content―sometimes referred to as citizen journalism or participatory journalism―becomes increasingly prominent in contemporary media. As the contributors to this edited volume demonstrate, the mere use of digital technologies is not the fundamental challenge of a new citizen-engaged journalism; rather, a deeper understanding of how civic/public journalism can inform citizen-propelled initiatives is required.Through a mix of original research, essays, interviews, and case studies, this collection establishes how public journalism principles and practices offer journalists, scholars, and citizens insights into how digital technology and other contemporary practices can increase civic engagement and improve public life. ... [Amazon.com]
Families Communicating with Children
2010
Thomas Joseph Socha and Julie Yingling

This book offers a fresh and insightful introduction to children's communication development that emphasizes how families help children learn to communicate optimally. Writing for communication students, parents, teachers, and all who care for children, the authors argue that optimal development of children's communication competencies depends on family participation in everyday learning situations that challenge children's skills and build communication confidence… [From Amazon.com]
Parents and Children Communicating with Society: Managing Relationships Outside of Home
2009
Thomas J. Socha (Editor) and Glen H. Stamp (Editor)

The volume opens a new frontier in parent-child communication research as it brings together veteran researchers and newcomers to explore the communication of parents and children as they create relationships outside the family. The chapters herein examine communication processes and problems of parents and children as they interact with childcare, healthcare, education, and youth sports; investigate the unique challenges facing various types of families as they communicate outside the family (e.g., stepfamilies and gay/lesbian/bisexual families); and consider the role of media in family relationships outside of home.The primary audiences for the volume includes scholars, researchers and graduate students studying communication in families, children’s communication, communication in personal relationships, organizational communication, group communication, and health communication. It will also be of interest to psychologists who study families, children, and organizations; sociologists who study families, children, and organizations; education researchers; teachers; coaches; family physicians; and family therapists.It has the potential for use in courses in family communication, family studies, family sociology, and child development. [Amazon.com]
Making Easy Listening: Material Culture and Postwar American Recording
2006
Tim J. Anderson

The period between the Second World War and the mid-1960s saw the American music industry engaged in a fundamental transformation in how music was produced and experienced. Tim Anderson analyzes three sites of this music revolution: the change from a business centered around live performances to one based on selling records, the custom of simultaneously bringing out multiple versions of the same song, and the arrival of in-home high-fidelity stereo systems. Making Easy Listening presents a social and cultural history of the contentious, diverse, and experimental culture of musical production and enjoyment that aims to understand how recording technologies fit into and influence musicians’, as well as listeners’, lives. With attention to the details of what it means to play a particular record in a distinct cultural context, Anderson connects neglected genres of the musical canon—classical and easy listening music, Broadway musicals, and sound effects records—with the development of sound aesthetics and technical music practices that leave an indelible imprint on individuals. Tracing the countless impacts that this period of innovation exacted on the mass media, Anderson reveals how an examination of this historical era—and recorded music as an object—furthers a deeper understanding of the present-day American music industry. [Amazon.com]
Thinking Outside the Box: A Contemporary Television Genre
2005
Gary R. Edgerton (Editor) and Brian G. Rose (Editor)

Thinking Outside the Box brings together some of the best and most challenging scholarship about TV genres, exploring their genesis, their functions and development, and the interaction of disparate genres. The authors argue that genre is a process rather than a static category and that it signifies much about the people who produce and watch the shows.

In addition to considering traditional genres such as sitcoms, soap operas, and talk shows, the contributors explore new hybrids, including reality programs, teen-oriented science fiction, and quality dramas, and examine how many of these shows have taken on a global reach. Identifying historical continuities and envisioning possible trends, this is the richest and most current study of how television genres form, operate, and change. [Amazon.com]